


Perceive

by Niamh_of_Magic



Category: Arthurian Mythology, The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: Character Study, Framing Story, Heightened Language, Historical Fantasy, Literature, Magic, Magical Realism, Origin Story, POV First Person, ancient being, personality sketch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28255584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niamh_of_Magic/pseuds/Niamh_of_Magic
Summary: The world has forgotten me and I stand in its oblivious shadow. What is left for me at the end of all knowledge? And who will be there to listen?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Perceive

This world—our world—is a place of paradoxes. Of things too far away to see distinctly and yet too close to be disremembered. Where mere figments of fabrication are called scientific truth. And for science? Science is miscalled phantasm.

I perceive this, as I stand where no one sees me and hear as no one listens. The contorting of the world is complete. People used to call on me for aid. They would turn to me in impecunious necessary, and I would attend them.

But now, not one perceives me. I am past retrospection, consigned to the vast oblivion of the human cognizance.

I was once an orthodox part of the pattern of nature. Accepted in the world of verifiable fact as were sphinxes, elves and valkyries. Those beings were my comrades, my brothers-in-arms, and I was queen.

They solicited my counsel and heeded my opinions. They elevated me on their shoulders and named me the perspicacious leader of their kind. I accepted their reverence towards me as I accepted everything in my existence. The Goddess had fabricated my spirit to lead. It was my birthright, the privilege of one such as I am — a mistress of magic, a handmaiden of the moon.

There are many chronicles of how my existence began. Some choose to believe that I am a changeling that never returned to fairyland. Others grow more outrageous as they fervently avow that I sprung from the essence of a dragon or even that I am the Goddess herself. This is all preposterous; the authentic story is much more diverting and spectacular.

I came to be a millennia ago when the world was perceptive and knowledgeable. I arose before they seized the secrets of the stars and pressed them into their formulas and textbooks, distorting pure truth in an endeavor to neaten it up and install it into an enumeration of facts. Far away from the celestial body called earth, a woman came into existence. The heart of a near-dead star met the expanse of space. In the meeting of unrelenting heat and bitter cold, a soul was conceived. The Goddess had granted me life.

But I was still only a soul; stars and constellations, nebulae and galaxies, rushed through my formless self. As they passed through me, I felt the reverberations of 10 million ages pounding at the walls of my consciousness. It would have unhinged your mind to perceive such a thing. But not mine; I am not composed of flesh and blood, but of stardust magic with galaxies streaming through my veins.

I listened to the universe, and it bequeathed me its ancient knowledge. It taught me magic transcending sensibility and enlightenment as preeminent as the Goddess herself. It would bleed away all of your fragile, trifling, fleeting consciousness of life ere I could recount to you all that I have comprehended and completed. Even my anecdote of how I chanced upon your island planet would exhaust your lifespan.

Yet I cherish you and all your species, notwithstanding your itinerant infidelity and repulsive treatment of my people. You arise so incomparably in education and science while you resign your enlightenment and understanding into oblivion.

Yet we transpire here, in the adumbrations and obscurations of the earth. I am unhesitant in my resolution to leave. I anticipate the emergence of the moon, who alone comprehends my soul. I dance. I look at her flawless radiance and feel it seep into my body.

I perceive the world, as I stand where no one sees me and hear as no one listens.

But no. A presence is here. I turn and perceive her, a girl with eyes soaked in moonshine. She observes me, and she smiles.

"Morgaine," she says, voice as pure and transparent as crystal, "Morgaine le Fey."


End file.
